COVID-19 Response | 2020 Mosquers Film Festival Update

A message from the Co-Chairs

Along with the rest of our local and global community, the Mosquers team has had to rapidly adapt in response to COVID-19. While some of these forced adaptions have sparked incredible displays of creativity and talent as our team finds innovative ways to showcase Muslim art and celebrate diversity, others have forced us to make difficult decisions that we do not take lightly. Today, we are unfortunately faced with one of those decisions.

For the past several months, our incredible team of nearly 30 individuals has been working tirelessly to curate our planned 2020 Festival which was set to occur on September 19th at the Winspear Centre. As circumstances have evolved over the last few weeks, we have had significant conversations amongst our team; with filmmakers whose projects have had to be put on hold indefinitely; and with health officials who have advised that an event of our size is likely not safely doable this year. As such, we have decided to push the event date to Spring/Early 2021.

As our valued stakeholders and supporters, we want to explain our thinking around this decision and answer some questions you may have:

Why not move to a digital event in 2020?

We are aware that many festivals have moved to digital formats this year, and this is something we have given serious consideration. However, we know that the Mosquers Film Festival is as much about the film-viewing experience as it is about the celebration of our creative community through the physical spaces and opportunities for interaction we create.

While we believe we could create an incredible digital offering, it would not quite match the full experience of what the Mosquers Film Festival has grown to become. As such, we’ve decided it is best for us to postpone our signature event until it is safe to bring our community together again. We will carefully monitor directions from public health officials; if it is deemed that an event of our scale is not possible in the foreseeable future, we may revisit the idea of a digital event.

How will this affect the filmmakers and creatives that are a part of our event?

Through this time of social distancing, The Mosquers Team, like most others, have relied heavily on creatives in film, television, and otherwise, to provide us with entertainment and an escape. However, we are also well aware that this same community that we have turned to is struggling more than ever as they are unable to work on their creative projects or submit works to festivals like ours that provide real monetary support for their creative careers.

Given our goal of being a platform to showcase talent and celebrate our creative community, we are committing to the following as we work through this pandemic:

1) We will continue to regularly highlight Muslim creatives through our digital platforms – be it on our social media channels, our podcast (“The Halal Gap”), on our website, or otherwise.

2) We will do our small part to help with the monetary challenges our filmmaking community is facing by doubling the cash prize for the Best Picture Award and the Best Local Picture Award at our next Festival. This brings our new total prize pool to $9,000.

3) We will amend the rules for submission so that eligible films can be made at any time between our previous festival and our submission deadline (which will for now be pushed to December 31, 2020).

When exactly will the rescheduled festival take place?

We wish we had an answer to this question. We are working closely with our partners (specifically, the Winspear Centre) and listening intently to our Public Health leaders to determine when it may be safe to once more have an event. What we can say at this point, is that we are placing holds on numerous dates throughout early 2021 and into spring 2021 and are committed to bringing you the Mosquers Film Festival as soon as possible. If it is safe to do so, our goal is to have the next event well before Fall 2021 and we will keep everyone updated throughout. We do not anticipate having multiple events in 2021.

How will this impact the organization?

As we rely heavily on sponsorship to fund our programming (by selling advertising opportunities at the Main Festival), we of course find ourselves in a similar situation as many other non-profit organizations at this time. In also being mindful of our business community’s current situation, we have not been actively pursuing sponsorship as much as we would have otherwise at this time.

Fortunately, we have been prudent in our spending and successful in creating programming that is both affordable to the public and sustainable for the organization in recent years. That has put us in a current financial situation where we can withstand some level of sponsorship decline and still focus on carrying forth new forms of programming. However, this certainly cannot continue indefinitely, and we ask that if you would like to support and partner with the Mosquers Film Festival, to please reach out to us. Our Partnerships Package is available on our website at www.themosquers.com/sponsor and our Finance & Partnerships Director, Farha Kharadi can be reached at farha@themosquers.com.

As a team, we are entirely volunteer run and our highly motivated members are committed to carrying forth the vision of our Festival through to the next event, and beyond. Sustainability and continual growth of this organization are paramount to our Board, and we will commit to ensuring both.

On a more personal note, as Co-Chairs of this organization, it has been phenomenal to see the level of adaptability of our team and their ability to still provide consistent, meaningful, content despite these challenges. We are so excited to keep pushing the boundaries of what this organization can do and to share what we have planned with all of you.

Peace be upon you all,

Sofia Alani
Co-Chair

Sikandar Atiq
Co-Chair